This paper investigates whether gold and silver can be considered safe havens by examining their long-run linkages with 22 stock price indices. More specifically, the stochastic properties of the differential between gold/silver prices and 22 stock indices are analysed applying fractional...

This paper provides a detailed assessment of the real-time forecast accuracy of a wide range of vector autoregressive models (VAR) that allow for both structural change and indicators sampled at different frequencies. We extend the literature by evaluating a mixed-frequency time-varying...

This paper documents a comparative application of algorithms to deal with the problem of missing values in higher frequency data sets. We refer to Swiss business tendency survey (BTS) data which are conducted in both monthly and quarterly frequency, where an information sub-set is collected at...

This paper analyses the relationship between CPI and real GDP in both the US and the UK using fractional integration and long-range dependence techniques. All series appear to be highly trended and to exhibit high degrees of integration and persistence, especially in the case of CPI. Since the...

Almost all countries worldwide closed schools at the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis. I document that schooling time dropped on average by -55% in the US and -45% in Germany from the onset of the crisis to the summer of 2021. In the US, schools were closed longer in richer than in poorer areas,...

This paper analyses persistence and non-linearities in quarterly and monthly US Treasury 10-year bond yields over the period 1962-2021 using two different fractional integration approaches including Chebyshev polynomials and Fourier functions respectively. The results for both quarterly and...

We estimate Okun's law, the negative relationship between output and the unemployment rate, at the sector level for the US, the UK, Japan, and Switzerland to test several hypotheses that may explain why the aggregate Okun's coeffcients are different across countries. Specifically, we show that...

To date, only annual information on economic activity is published for the 16 German states. In this paper, we calculate quarterly regional GDP estimates for the period between 1995 to 2021, thereby improving the regional database for Germany. The new data set will regularly be updated when...

This paper examines persistence, structural breaks and non-linearities in the case of five European stock market indices, namely the FTSE100 (UK), DAX30 (Germany), CAC40 (France), IBEX35 (Spain) and FTSE MIB40 (Italy), using fractional integration methods. The empirical results provide no...